Spectator - The Magazine

The coming Tory attack on Brown

, 22 Nov 2008 10:35:19 GMT

We can expect to see a lot of Ken Clarke over the next few days; the Tories know that he is still on of their most convincing voices on the economy. His interview in The Times today is helpful to the Tory cause. But it is worth noting that he breaks with the leadership in endorsing the idea of a stimulus package albeit one of a very different stripe from the one Brown and Darling are said to be planning, Clarke favours a temporary reduction in VAT to 15 percent.

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How Cameron should respond to the 'Tory cuts' jibe

, 19 Nov 2008 10:49:12 GMT

The clunking fist will be swinging for David Cameron today at PMQs. Gordon Brown will see yesterday’s Tory decision not to pledge to match Labour’s spending plans for 2010-11 as his chance to paint them as both clueless and heartless.

David Cameron should reply to Brown’s inevitable tirade about ‘Tory cuts’ with something along these lines:

"We’ll match his party on education, funding for the police, the military and the frontline of the health service. But we won’t match them on waste, inefficiency and pointless bureaucratic schemes."

However tempting it might be to get]]>

Crossword

, 19 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

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Low life

, 19 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

I have three friends whom I’ve kept up with since we sat together, aged five, in Mrs Asplin’s class at the local county primary school. After Mrs Asplin, we were taught by Mrs Dobson, then Mrs Asplin again, then Mr Seager, then Mrs Dobson again, then Mr Middleton and then Mr Farrell. These teachers were all kind except Mr Seager, who was Welsh and shouted at us and made us write out hymns. After that we were swallowed up by a huge, new and somewhat terrifying comprehensive school and in the second year I moved away from the area.

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Glorious gadgets

, 19 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Is Christmas creeping up on you, unawares? Again? Have you found yourself, even at this late hour, facing a nil-all draw as far as presents bought, and presents asked for, is concerned? Never mind. When, finally, you can no longer ignore what is happening all around you, at least you can be comforted by the knowledge that your gardening friends and relations are easy to buy for. Little twiddly gardening gadgets are the very stuff of mail-order catalogues, and thus available without you leaving your hearthside to sit in a traffic jam. If a paving stone weeder doesn’t quite fit]]>

Surprising literary ventures

, 19 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Chekhov originally wrote the dramatic monologue, On The Harmful Effects of Tobacco, in 1886, and substantially revised it for a second version of 1902 shortly before his death. It deals with Ivan Ivanovitch Nyukhin, a hen-pecked husband who delivers a lecture (at the request of his wife) on the evils of smoking. The play has largely been ignored by Chekhov scholars in the West, despite the fact that the original version was popular in Russia in the 1880s as a farce: it was only published in translation in 1954, and appeared in the edition shown above in 1977. Nyukhin is]]>

Spain’s secret kingdoms

, 19 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

One of the joys of visiting Leon and Burgos, two of the principal cities of Spain, is that you are highly unlikely to meet another foreign tourist. It was midsummer, less than a day’s drive from the north coast (now known as the Costa Verde) and the glorious mountain scenery of the Picos de Europa, yet the only non-Spanish voices we heard were those not of tourists but of rucksacked pilgrims, passing through on the road to Santiago de Compostela.

As mediaeval seats of the kings of Leon and Castile, both these cities have magnificent cathedrals. Leon’s, known as the]]>

Chess

, 19 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

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Dear Mary

, 19 Nov 2008 00:00:00 GMT

Q. At a packed piano recital the other night, we were the only ones who didn’t have white hair, so had every reason to expect good manners to prevail. Nevertheless, during Träumerei, a lady started peeling apart a cellophane wrapper. It was a long, loving and loud process, and to judge by the surreptitious movement with which she finally raised the sweetmeat to her mouth, she knew she was doing wrong. The concert hall acoustics heartbreakingly magnified the sound and ruined my enjoyment of this piece. It may also have enraged the famous pianist, who did not favour us with]]>